The UN Has a Bad Image? Naah....

The website of the UN Forum is ordinarily a lot of inside-baseball chitchat, written by UN hacks for UN bureaucrats and the pliant UN press corps. But a couple of recent entries, posted within the past few days, stand out. The subject was the UN's image. Apparently it stinks! Oh my. How terrible.

One of the pieces trashes the UN's chief flack, Shashi Tharoor, described here as an "unabashed self promoter [who] failed completely in defending the organization that embraced him."

Another piece, which also trashes Tharoor, says that the $1 billion that Ted Turner gave to the UN, a lot of it for PR-related stuff apparently, was flushed down the toilet:

Eventually, it transpired that some of these projects -- let alone those sponsored benefits -- were like buying fish while it was still in the sea.
The Communications projects in particular turned out to be almost like travel junkets, particularly financing tours around the world by self-promoter Shashi Tharoor while the U.N. image was plummeting to an unprecedented low.

Junkets? Seems they're taking their ethical cues from the shills and two-bit hacks of the UN press corps.

Which reminds me: Ian Williams, are you there? Better drop everything and get on over to the UN. You're needed!